The present invention relates to the field of data processing, and more particularly to the field of software development tools.
The unified modeling language (UML) is a graphical language for visualizing, specifying, constructing, and documenting the artifacts of a software-intensive system. The UML offers a standard way to write a system's blueprints, including conceptual things such as business processes and system functions as well as concrete things such as programming language statements, database schemas, and reusable software components.
The UML specification March 2003, version 1.5, formal/03-0301 (http://www.omg.org/docs/formal/03-03-01.pdf) encompasses UML activity diagrams (cf. part 10, pages 3-155 to 3-169 of the UML specification). A UML activity diagram is a variation of a state machine in which the states represent the performance of actions or sub-activities and the transitions are triggered by the completion of the actions or sub-activities.
The entire UML activity diagram is attached to a classifier, such as a use case, or to a package, or to the implementation of an operation. The purpose of this UML activity diagram is to focus on flows driven by internal processing—as opposed to external events.
UML activity diagrams are the object-oriented equivalent of flowcharts that allow to visualize the flow of events from one activity to another. They are often used to model workflows or business processes.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,734,837 shows a method and system which provides consultants, business process analysts, and application developers with a tool with which to conduct business process analysis, design, documentation and to generate business process definitions and workflow-enabled applications. This can be implemented using a software system which has two functional sets. One is a set of graphical tools that can be used by a developer or business analyst to map out business processes. The second is a set of tools that can be used to document and specify in detail the attributes of each workflow definition, including roles, cycle time, conditions, of satisfaction, cost and value, associated text, forms, application data as well as detail the attributes of links between workflows required to complete a business process map, and to generate a business process definition and a workflow-enabled application. This also includes a workflow language scripting capability.